Acknowledgments

I cannot name the people to whom this book owes its primary debt, the people who let me into their world, who extended me hospitality, and who allowed me to write about them, knowing that I would get things wrong. My name may be on the cover of this book, but it does not belong to me. If Akira, Kentarō, Takeda-san, or Nē-san ever pick up a Japanese version of this book, I hope that they will recognize themselves in it and feel that it does a modicum of justice to their lives. The source of this ethnography resides in the poetry of their everyday conduct. In the academy, Marilyn Ivy has acted as an unstinting source of intellectual support for almost fifteen years. Through COVID-19, intolerable reviews, and my departure from the academy, she continued to rally for the publication of this manuscript. It would not have come into existence in her absence. I would have given up. I know that Christopher T. Nelson acted as an absolutely vital source of support for this manuscript, that he did so more than once, and that he did so with nothing to gain. Thank you. The manuscript also owes an impossible debt to my mentors: Harry Harootunian, Thomas LaMarre, Rosalind C. Morris, and John Pemberton—they inspired its substance and navigated its politics of publication. At Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, I would like to thank Ariana King, who promoted the book and acted as a constant, reassuring presence through the entirety of an anxious, seemingly endless process. I would also like to thank Carol Gluck. At Sophia University, I would like to thank David H. Slater, who sparked my interest in cultural anthropology, and who pushed for me to study in the United States twenty years ago. At Cornell University Press, I would like to thank my editors, Jim Lance and Ellen Labbate, who pushed for publication within an astonishing timeline, and Mary Kate Murphy. I would also like to thank the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University and its fellows from 2018–2019. Beyond the academy, I would like to thank Oliver Alexander, Tommy Birkett, Jennifer D. Carlson, Familien Damgård, Marguerite France, Charles Jester, Dounyazade Joyce Jester, Kanemoto Sensei, Kiki (our pup), Nadia Latif, Andrew McKenzie-McHarg, Aslı Menevse, Harumi Osaki, Reviewer #1 for CA, David Rojas, Hector Ivan Saenz, Kerry Suzuki, Miyako Tanimoto, Monica Lorenzo Tejedor, and Cindy Truong. Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Anson Wigner, who created potential cover images for this book, knowing that discretion to use these images resided entirely with the press. In closing, it goes without saying that this book started with the many trips that my parents brought me on as a child, to impress upon me the importance and excitement of interpretation across cultural difference. But if there is one person who has acted as a lifeline of support through the entire arc of this book, from its beginnings on 149th Street in Washington Heights, to Takeda-san’s apartment in San’ya, to Avenue des Érables in Montreal, and who had my back through the woes of publication, urging upon me the importance of life when my inability to publish had assumed a destructive force, it has been my partner in life and spouse, Nhu Truong.